Does HTML Validation Need to be Perfect for SEO?

Welcome to my Monday blog! I hope you all had a great last week and are looking forward to the one ahead.

A question that I have seen a lot around internet SEO forums: does HTML validation need to be tip top in order to impress Google and rank highly? If you aren’t sure what HTML validation is, go here. Basically, this tool will run through your website to check for errors in the HTML code. It will tell you what and where these errors are, for example: Line 31, Column 16: there is no attribute “property”.

Consider that Google is trying to send users to the best website for their query. So you would think your site would need to be perfect, right? Not entirely. The main reason for this is that even if your website does contain errors, most modern browsers are advanced enough to render it correctly.

I think of websites as like setntences: even if they’re not construted with perfect grammar, so long as they can be understood, they stand a fair chance of being understood. So some HTML errors are permissable, so long as they don’t keep everything from “working” less than 95% in the most popular browsers.

So for my take on the question of perfect HTML validation: If your website cannot mostly function in most browsers, and you have too many errors throughout the code, then you will have problems with rankings and SEO. But if everything “works” or near enough, then you and your site will be fine!

Still, it can’t hurt to run your website through the Validator (see link above) just to be sure.